Gigabytes are cheaper than ever but they can also be the sort of thing where the more you have, the more you tend to consume, and it doesn't take long for the terabytes to fly by if you spend a lot of time on your computer.
Those of you running Windows on a compact SSD probably know what a chore it can be to maintain enough space on your drive between mobile backups, Windows Updates, PC games, media files, and so on. For this little guide we took it to an extreme by trying to free up space on an old 80GB Intel X25-M G2 solid state drive.
Although SSDs have improved by leaps and bounds over the nine years since this Intel drive was released, the device still has plenty of life left according to SSDlife Free and Intel's SSD Toolbox utility. Spending a mere $56 for a 250GB Samsung 860 Evo drive that is 200% faster than this old drive will eventually be a wise investment, but to be honest apart from frequently running out of storage, we haven't had a reason to upgrade the drive, nor have we installed a new copy of Windows in more than five years.
If you're wanting to clean up your drive, this guide will serve you regardless of your current storage solution. After hovering around <10GB for too long (enough to download or transfer a large file), we set out to regain as much space as we could by moving, compressing and deleting files from all around Windows. In the end, 27GB of storage was recovered (37GB total free) and we took notes along the way to share with you in the event that your Windows drive is also low on space.
You can perform that scan manually by clicking "Free up space now" on the Storage Sense settings page and the utility will delete the following data:
Those of you running Windows on a compact SSD probably know what a chore it can be to maintain enough space on your drive between mobile backups, Windows Updates, PC games, media files, and so on. For this little guide we took it to an extreme by trying to free up space on an old 80GB Intel X25-M G2 solid state drive.
Although SSDs have improved by leaps and bounds over the nine years since this Intel drive was released, the device still has plenty of life left according to SSDlife Free and Intel's SSD Toolbox utility. Spending a mere $56 for a 250GB Samsung 860 Evo drive that is 200% faster than this old drive will eventually be a wise investment, but to be honest apart from frequently running out of storage, we haven't had a reason to upgrade the drive, nor have we installed a new copy of Windows in more than five years.
If you're wanting to clean up your drive, this guide will serve you regardless of your current storage solution. After hovering around <10GB for too long (enough to download or transfer a large file), we set out to regain as much space as we could by moving, compressing and deleting files from all around Windows. In the end, 27GB of storage was recovered (37GB total free) and we took notes along the way to share with you in the event that your Windows drive is also low on space.
Enable Windows 10 Storage Sense
Windows 10 has an automatic disk cleaning service that you can enable in Settings > System > Storage > "Turn on Storage sense." The feature auto-scans for temporary files when you're low on disk space along with removing local copies of OneDrive files and making them online-only after not being used for 30 days.You can perform that scan manually by clicking "Free up space now" on the Storage Sense settings page and the utility will delete the following data:
- Temporary setup files
- Old indexed content
- System cache files
- Internet cache files
- Device Driver packages
- System downloaded program files
- Dated system log files
- System error memory dump files
- System error minidump files
- Temporary system files
- Dated Windows update temporary files
Scan for files with Disk Cleanup, and third party tools
Junk file cleaners make it easy to perform a system-wide file cleanup and may be useful for freeing up storage on low capacity SSDs where a few extra gigs can make or break the performance of your operating system. If you've never used a junk file remover before, you might be surprised by how much space can be reclaimed with even Windows' own built-in Disk Cleaner:
The result of the scan will display different types of data, from Recycle Bin files to temporary internet cache. If you clicked Clean up system files, "Temporary Windows installation files" among other Windows files will be listed, which could easily be consuming several gigabytes to as much as 25GB or more.
Disk Cleaner can also be launched with advanced options such as the ability to delete files that would be used to reset your operating system (the Windows ESD files) by copying or entering this line into a Command Prompt: cleanmgr /sageset:50
- Search the Start Menu for Disk Cleanup
- Open Disk Cleanup and select your main system drive
- The tool will scan your drive for unnecessary files and old cached data
- Clicking "Clean up system files" near the bottom of the window will run a second scan
The result of the scan will display different types of data, from Recycle Bin files to temporary internet cache. If you clicked Clean up system files, "Temporary Windows installation files" among other Windows files will be listed, which could easily be consuming several gigabytes to as much as 25GB or more.
Disk Cleaner can also be launched with advanced options such as the ability to delete files that would be used to reset your operating system (the Windows ESD files) by copying or entering this line into a Command Prompt: cleanmgr /sageset:50
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